"Street Smart" isn't "Perfect" (thank heaven). It's more like
"Uptown/Downtown," a look at the world of differences between a
well-heeled magazine journalist (Christopher Reeve), who concocts a
fictional profile of an upwardly mobile Times Square pimp, and a real
pimp (Morgan Freeman), who the law is convinced is the model for the
story.
The piece ends up on the cover of the glitzy New York Journal and
before you can say "call my agent," Reeve is doing a series of
investigative bits for a television news program. Problems crop up when
the real pimp is charged with a murder and the prosecution demands the
journalist's notes on his interviews.
Those notes, of course, don't exist, and while at first Reeve
stonewalls with First Amendment excuses, he later has a hard time
convincing anyone that he made the whole thing up. The judge holds him
in contempt, and the pimp's trial turns into a constitutional
confrontation.
Reeve's character is no Clark Kent or Seymour Hersh, but a cynical,
opportunistic writer quick to make ethical and moral compromises and
sell out to the highest bidder. The part is a welcome change of pace for
the Actor of Steel, who comes across as an unlikable, unscrupulous cad.
(He's a handsome cad, though -- obviously tapped for the role because
his looks so closely approximate those of the average working
journalist.)
Kathy Baker does a good turn as a prostitute -- she's far from
gorgeous, but hard and stout and looking like she's been around -- while
the preppy-looking Mimi Rogers plays Reeve's girlfriend. Andre Gregory
(of "My Dinner With ...") plays Reeve's socialite editor, lemon-faced
Jay Patterson the prosecuting attorney and Frederick Rolf the sleazy
defense lawyer. Both journalism and the law take a beating here.
Also, Montreal appears as New York.
The most convincing acting comes from Freeman as the vicious pimp
Fast Black. The role is hardly a triumph over racial stereotypes, but
the veteran actor gives his character an indelibly ugly and disturbing
edge, making quite real the mix of paternalism and sudden sadism that
pimps use to keep their victims on a short leash.
But "Street Smart" as a whole is flat. Director Jerry Schatzberg's
major problems are lethargic pacing and a strained plot. The sequence of
events portrayed -- from the uncomfy alliance between writer and pimp to
the proposed new fiction (phony notes) designed to provide Reeve with an
alibi -- is less than logical, and the violent finale is not only
ridiculous but morally reprehensible. Street Smart, at area theaters, is
rated R and contains profanity and scenes of violence.
